Re: offline courtesy among list members

Subject: Re: offline courtesy among list members
From: "C. Janzen" <cjanzen -at- mindspring -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 12:34:11 -0600

A couple of comments in general...

1. Who scans their email by hand? Every package I've used for business or home has settings to scan automatically in the background.
2. I get between 100 and 200 messages a day between home and work, and the only way I can avoid being interrupted is to set the mail notification to off or to very infrequent. I know it's there. It doesn't care when I check it. :)
3. Some of the issues brought up are about other people's rudeness, not about the issue of thanking or not thanking. Don't send large attachments, don't send large sig files (though the legal clause some companies append is out of your hands), and make the email count for more than a "me too".
4. A "me too" is different than a "thank you" because generally a me too doesn't require much work, but a thank you is acknowledging that someone took part of their productive time and did something for you that they really didn't have to.
5. I send lots of mail. I have an ISP at home that is sometimes irregular in mail delivery and mail acceptance. If you don't respond, I haven't got the faintest idea whether you got it or not. You can hate the US postal service (for those of us in the States), but most of the time if you send a letter, the recipient gets it. Not always true with email. We like to think it is, but there are a lot of places mail can go awry, including (as someone noted) filters on your own system.
6. A reason why some people view either "Thank You (nm)" in the subject or just "thanks" in the body as bad form is the same reason your grandmother got irritated when you sent the thank you note for your birthday present and didn't say anything about it! Lots of people want to know that their effort helped, that they made a difference. How hard is it to say "Hey, thanks for the doc plan. My boss loved what I did with it, and the developers think I'm a goddess of documentation"? Guaranteed those three clauses don't take up near the bandwidth that your friend's dancing Santa Claus card took up!

I do get frustrated, because I don't have much time either. I try not to post or reply except when I see a place that I think I have unique or particularly helpful information. If I've done that, I'd like to know it made a difference. Well, time for me to increase my sugar intake and get rid of the grumpies. :)

Thanks,
Catherine

__________________
Catherine Janzen

Write Method, LLC
PO Box 13113
Overland Park, KS 66282-3113
(913) 383-8535
cjanzen -at- mindspring -dot- com





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References:
RE: offline courtesy among list members: From: Hannah Bissell

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